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Royal Navy is running out of sailors, Fleet Commander warns
The Royal Navy is running out of sailors, one of its most senior officers has warned, leaving Britain potentially exposed in a new era of global threats.
When asked to identify the single biggest challenge facing the Navy, Vice-Adml Andrew Burns, the Fleet Commander, pointed to a worrying shortfall in headcount.
He said: 'It's people, right now. It's the quantity of people. And it's not just recruitment, it's retention.'
His warning comes after Britain's naval forces have failed to hit their recruitment targets every year since 2011, with only 2,450 people joining their ranks in 2023-24, according to data from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
That represented a shortfall of more than 1,500 recruits, which was 40pc lower than their desired target. Notably, this was greater than shortfalls in the Army and the Royal Air Force, which were 37pc and 30pc respectively.
The Navy and Royal Marines have a full-time trained strength of about 28,000 men and women, according to an MoD spokesman.
'Improving our culture is important'
Vice-Adml Burns said future recruitment is likely to involve fewer uniformed personnel as the Navy seeks to advertise a wider range of jobs.
This could mean roles aimed at protecting subsea infrastructure or controlling fleets of uncrewed vessels.
While that might open up new avenues for recruitment, it also means that the Navy must accelerate cultural change to make itself attractive to wider parts of society, he warned.
Vice-Adml Burns said: 'Improving our culture is a really important part of that. We're determined to make improvements to the environment that people serve in.
'I also think there's a different set of skills required. A different blend in the workforce is required for the sort of systems and challenges we are going to face.
'That doesn't mean, necessarily, that we want people in uniform, because we know there are people with the right skills out there that want to serve their nation, but we don't necessarily have to have them marching up and down a parade ground.'
This forms part of the Navy's effort to counter growing aggression from Russia and China – Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins, the First Sea Lord, said earlier this week that Britain is facing a threat 'more serious and less predictable than at any time since the Cold War'.
'The Navy should be more open to innovation'
Vice-Adml Burns spoke at the Royal United Services Institute, a day after it was reported that three submarine captains had been stripped of their OBEs over claims of bullying and inappropriate behaviour.
The action came after Adml Sir Ben Key, the former first sea lord, vowed last year to institute a culture that eradicated such behaviour, before he himself was suspended last month over an alleged affair with a subordinate.
Vice-Adml Burns said that retaining trained personnel was even more important than hitting hiring targets.
'I'd much rather retain an individual that we have invested in than recruit many more sailors,' he said. 'We know that's much more cost-effective. We've got good data to allow the right sort of interventions at the right time.'
The Fleet Commander, who has been in the Navy for more than three decades and was promoted to the post in 2021 after captaining a minesweeper, frigate and assault ship, said the force also needed to forge a 'different relationship' with the private sector.
The Navy, he said, should be 'more open to the inventiveness, innovation and ideas that reside in the commercial sector in the way that they used to reside in the military in wartime'.
Vice-Adml Burns, delivering the annual Gallipoli Memorial Lecture, said steps such as the expansion of submarine and frigate fleets, detailed in the recent Strategic Defence Review, will not by themselves be enough to counter the range of maritime threats facing Britain.
He said the Navy must combine conventional defence systems with large numbers of uncrewed and autonomous craft in order to enhance its warfighting capabilities. It must also expand into areas such as protecting home waters from attacks on subsea cables and pipelines.
He added: 'There's also a shift in mentality required to be much more adaptable in the way we acknowledge how threats are evolving and the way we take that information and adapt our capabilities.
'We've learned a lot from Ukraine. If the Ukrainians can spiral their systems in a matter of days or weeks, then I'm sure we can do the same.'
